09/12/2023
Students of Sanskrit can choose among several good manuals. Whichever they may choose, learning Sanskrit is a daunting task. Sanskrit as an Indo-European Language by Harald Wiese is not an alternative textbook for learning Sanskrit. Instead, it is to accompany these textbooks and written in the hope to make Sanskrit learning easier by explaining words and grammatical forms from an Indo-European point of view.
08/29/2023
In both the Vedic and the classical periods, a special elite class of people existed that were called Brahmins. In a rough manner, one might say that their material wellbeing depended on dakṣiṇā in the Vedic period and on dāna in the classical one.
Broadening the perspective beyond dakṣiṇā and dāna, the present monograph is on all sorts of giving in the context of pre-modern India, using Vedic, Sanskrit, Buddhist and, to a much lesser extent, Roman and Christian sources. The Brahmanical theory of the gift (i.e., the theory of dutiful gifting, dharmadāna) is a major focus of, and has provided a major motivation for, this study.
08/22/2023
A thousand-year-old Ayurvedic manuscript containing the Compendium of Suśruta was announced to the scholarly world in 2007. The Nepalese manuscript, since adopted by UNESCO as part of the Memory of the World, reveals the state of classical Indian medicine in the ninth century. It enables us to study the changes in this medical classic that have taken place from the ninth to the nineteenth century, when printed texts began to dominate the dissemination of the work. The present monograph describes the research project focussed on this manuscript and offers an edition, study and translation of the historically important chapter about the plastic surgery on the nose and ears.
08/08/2023
New publication - Dhārī Devī, Goddess of the Floods
The trajectory of the Dhārī Devī Temple epitomises the idea of catastrophes as watersheds. In particular, flood disasters have accompanied transformation processes of the site located on Alaknanda River in the Indian Himalayas. As early as 1894, a flash flood had a significant impact on the site and the identity of the deity. Local flood legends gained new topicality with the planning of a hydroelectric power plant in the vicinity. They became part of debates surrounding the construction scheme that required the relocation of the sacred site. In her book Dhārī Devī, Goddess of the Floods Frances Anke Niebuhr explores flood discourses and illuminates their influence on a development project. It further demonstrates how previous controversies framed the public interpretation of two flood disasters in 2012 and specifically of the "Himalayan Tsunami" in 2013.
08/01/2023
New publication - God, Jesus and the Ancestors: An Ethnography of the Ancestors’ Rites in the Taiwanese Catholic Church
In God, Jesus and the Ancestors: An Ethnography of the Ancestors’ Rites in the Taiwanese Catholic Church the author Marco Lazzarotti describes the Ancestors Ceremonies as practiced in the Taiwanese Catholic Church. The author’s point is to demonstrate how the Chinese symbolic universe made a deep translation of the "new" symbolic system represented by the Catholic doctrine. At the same time the effort of the Catholic Church in order to adapt the Gospel message to the local situation built up a particular phenomenon that the author defined as cultural dialogue. It is this dialogic relationship the process that the author defines as Culture.
07/25/2023
New publication - bāteṁ. Hindi-Grammatik kommunikativ : Übungsbände 1+2
As part of the four-volume textbook bāteṁ. Hindi-Grammatik kommunikativ (Two textbooks, each with an accompanying workbook) by Elmar Josef Renner and Vipul Goswami, workbook volumes 1 and 2 have now been published.
The Copenhagen Hindi Course contextualises grammar in 46 lessons. This allows a communicative teaching approach. The contexts are taken from the lives of the authors and their families and friends. Instead of representing a textbook that pledges to offer a complete view on Hindi speaking society, the textual fragments underlying the exercises invite teachers and learners to offer their own perspectives while communicating in Hindi in order to acquire it.
Each lesson is centered around one main grammatical structure and provides a variety of exercises which makes the workbook applicable in various course formats.
